The United States is funding a civilian port in Batanes, the country’s smallest province, which has a strategic significance in the region being located less than 200 kilometers away from Taiwan, Gov. Marilou Cayco said over the weekend.
Cayco, in an interview during a Philippine Navy event, said officials of the US Army will arrive late next month to discuss plans for the new facility, Kyodo News said in its report.
She said the plan, developed in coordination with the Philippine military, aims to accommodate Filipino workers in Taiwan in the event of a crisis.
Organizers of this year’s “Balikatan” military exercises are considering parts of Northern Luzon, including Mavulis Island in Batanes provinces to serve as a venue of the annual drills.
“Our exercises rotate to different parts of the Philippines. Right now, our outlying areas are being considered as we are now externally oriented. So this means our exercises also are geared at such. One of the areas being considered is Northern Luzon. It is still being considered and there is no final decision yet,” Philippine Navy spokesperson for the West Philippine Sea Commodore Roy Vincent Trinidad said last month.
Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. earlier ordered the military to expand its presence in Batanes – a plan that elicited an immediate warning from China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin who said the Philippines should “tread carefully and don’t play with fire” by putting troops near Taiwan.
The Department of National Defense, however, was also quick to rebuff Beijing: “Batanes is Philippine territory and China has no business warning the Philippines about what it does within its own territory.”
US maritime security expert Ray Powell said boosting military presence in Batanes could complicate China’s problems, which eventually could be beneficial for the Philippines.
“By strengthening Philippine national defense overall and particularly in the maritime area, we want to see China have to think about more things,” he said in a previous interview with ANC.
“Any day that Xi Jinping wakes up in the morning and thinks this is a bad day to cause problems for the Philippines is a good day for the Philippines and so to the extent that he looks out and sees this is too complicated,” Powell added.
Plans to build more structures in Batanes are part of the Comprehensive Archipelagic Defense Concept to address gaps in the country’s defenses.
As this developed, Navy flag-officer-in-command Vice Admiral Toribio Adaci Jr. said naval reservists could play a major role in the CADC implementation.
Adaci made this remark during the integration rites for 119 Ivatan volunteers into the Navy’s reserve force at the Basco Municipal Gymnasium in Batanes on Saturday.
He said strengthening the reserve force will significantly contribute to the Navy’s Active Archipelagic Defense Strategy by bolstering the service’s capabilities in projecting its force in the country’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
“Their contributions are instrumental in enhancing maritime security and disaster response as they bring valuable civilian skills and knowledge to the naval organization,” Adaci said.
